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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24029005">A Charm to Ward off Evil, For a Time</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/SouthernContinentSkies/pseuds/SouthernContinentSkies'>SouthernContinentSkies</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Bio-Weapons, Chemical Weapons, Gen, Quarantine, References to War Crimes, Time Period: First Cetagandan War, contamination as extended metaphor, disease-related paranoia, fear of contamination</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-03 01:41:35</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,071</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24029005</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/SouthernContinentSkies/pseuds/SouthernContinentSkies</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>When Xav comes back from Beta, they make him wait ten days.</p><p>Note: The vibe of this story is inspired by Current Events. There’s no epidemic in the story, as such, but if you are struggling with the psychological aspects of the pandemic, this may not be your cup of tea at this time.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>53</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>A Charm to Ward off Evil, For a Time</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>When Xav comes back from Beta, they make him wait ten days.</p><p>Quarantine, they tell him: standard procedure now, my lord. For the shuttle, too, apparently; even as he disembarks, he can see a hazmat-suited team approach with a spray tank of something he assumes is disinfectant. He thinks about trying to explain Beta Colony’s public health and customs protocols, and the blazing heat of re-entry that has already sanitized the shuttle beyond anything they could do down here - and then he sees the fear under the officer’s blank expression, and thinks better of it. To Xav, space is an escape now, a gateway to wonders; for those he left behind, it’s brought only death.</p><p>It hadn’t been this bad when he’d left. What little he can see through the small window of the pre-fab at the edge of their jury-rigged shuttleport shows him that this quarantine protocol is not only thing that’s changed. Six months can be a long time in a war, and the distance between Xav, in his ship-clean suit, and the dirt-stained, hollow-eyed soldiers outside has never been greater.</p><p>Later, he hears about the bio-weapons, and starts, imperfectly, to understand: the missile with the choking gas near Tanery, that had soldiers’ melting eyeballs running down their faces with the tears; the slower horror at Saradimir, where an assumed near-miss started one sergeant coughing, and then his men, and three days later an entire battalion was dead. The messenger they’d sent back to Yuri was found dead in his tracks across the river, barely a mile away from making a deadly report. They’d changed their courier protocols after that. Another wartime lesson: breath can carry more than a soul.</p><p>Yuri won’t see him in person, even after he gets out of quarantine. Beyond the infected messenger, a close call in Vortala’s District two months ago has made him understandably skittish, if a bit unreasonably so. Then again, he’s not wrong to be careful. Losing the Crown Prince would be a blow they don’t need, even if Dorca’s only an Emperor-in-backwoods-exile at this point. They need a future, or they’ve already lost. </p><p>Still, whatever the circumstances, Xav needs to make his report. They talk through a rickety comm system as a compromise, connected by rubberized wires between adjacent rooms. It’s a crude imitation of the holovid set-ups Xav has seen and used on Beta Colony, but it’s workable. Their conversation is productive, hitting all the relevant points of treaties, weapons, and logistics, but Xav ends the call uneasy. Yuri’s eyes seem overbright, somehow. Not from disease, assuredly, with his battalion of physicians and their tests - but there’s a hint of mania still, that makes Xav think of fever. When he hears that Yuri has progressed from refusing paper records, to outright burning them, he sighs in worry, but is unsurprised.</p><p>Yuri isn’t the only one with tics, anyway. Half the soldiers in the camp have something tucked away in one pocket, or more often several, that promises protection from the war: a sprig of thyme; a resin-coated mask; a flask of mother’s tears; miniature icons, sometimes, for the more devout. None of it will help, of course, but the men need something, anything, to put between them and the invisible threat that lurks outside the camp, even if it’s only the thinnest shred of hope.</p><p>At night, Xav wanders through the lines of tents, looking longingly at the stars, alone in the middle of the crowded camp. The soldiers keep their distance; out of deference or decontamination protocols, Xav can’t yet tell. The resulting solitude is an unusual freedom that he cherishes, even as it leaves him feeling a bit unmoored, especially after the happy crowds of Beta. He doesn’t even have an armsman, at the moment. Karpov will be back with him when he leaves again, but for now, Yuri’s requisitioned him as back-up. Xav doesn’t mind. It’s reassuring, actually, that his brother can find some balance between his increasing phobia of contamination and his more grounded sense of personal safety. And anyway, if a Ceta assassin comes for him here, in the middle of Yuri’s allegedly hidden army, they’ll have much bigger problems than Xav’s lack of bodyguard.</p><p>Even with this small enjoyment, Xav can’t wait to leave again. He feels guilty, disloyal, for the sentiment, but it’s true. If his duty lay here, instead of out in space, he’d bow to it - but he can feel the miasma of the army’s anxiety sinking into him, and he wants to get out. If he stays here long enough, wallows in it, leaves the dubious safety of the camp for the unknowable risks of their movable battlefield, he’ll end up as infected as the rest of them, even if he never takes a hit. He’s heard what Piotr’s doing in the Vorkosigan hills, Yuri’s apprentice off his leash at last, and he wants no part of it.</p><p>He can almost feel it in his skin by the time he finally gets his launch window. The shuttle’s air is filtered, but it’s only once they dock with the <em>Rosalind Franklin</em> that the breath Xav takes finally feels clean.</p>
<hr/><p>On Beta, where the closeness of the walls embraces, rather than confines, Xav turns to Jacqueline for comfort. Her, at least, he can touch without fear.</p><p>Between the meetings and negotiations, he finds the courage to ask her for a very Barrayaran favor.</p><p>“My mother’s dead,” he says, by way of explanation. “But a soldier’s sweetheart sometimes does it, too. It’s for good luck.” <em>For protection in the dark</em>, he does not say. <em>To ward off evil, when you’ve shed your tears already. To not tempt fate.</em></p><p>“I’d rather send you with a vial of broad-spectrum antibiotics, or a dozen,” Jacqueline says, Betan-sensibile, a breath of unfiltered fresh air. But she takes the vial anyway. She never mocks his “primitive superstitions,” as he knows her colleagues sometimes do, and he appreciates her steadiness more than he can say.</p><p>When Xav goes back to Barrayar again, he takes the vial with him, tucked against his breast, a captive shard of starlight. The weapons on the transport with him will do more good against the Cetas, but the memory of Beta in his pocket is a cure beyond a doctor’s skill to quantify. With hope, it will be a light in dark places, enough to guide him safely through the fog of war.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Inspired by *gestures vaguely outside*, and also by The Magnus Archives Ep 164, the first half of which is basically a spoken word prose poem on Fear Of Disease/Corruption, literal and metaphorical, and what people do in response. They recorded it way before Current Events and warned for it and everything, but it still just about knocked me over with the sheer terrible accuracy of it. So, here, have a narrative Barrayaran version.</p><p>Also, for the Quarantine square on my Trope Bingo card, which for the record was generated in January.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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